Riot – Page 4 – Dark Nights

Nantes, France: The night of the barricades

Posted on 2023/03/18 by darknights

The pyromaniac at the Élysée Palace set the fire. In Nantes, as throughout France, spontaneous calls against the 49-3 brought tens of thousands of people together within a few hours. It was no longer about pensions, but about the “revolution” that was sung in chorus in the demonstration marches.

In Nantes, the repressive apparatus that has terrorized the city for months was caught off guard this time: even with all its grenades, it could not quell the rage.

For several hours, dozens of barricades burned throughout the city center. The whole heart of Nantes smells of burnt plastic and tear gas, but it’s a boost of oxygen: finally, people are raising their heads.

Various shop windows of capitalist businesses are smashed. The CRS1 assaults are kept at bay by impressive fireworks. Many trade unionists hold the street together with the youth. In the Rue de Strasbourg, the BAC2 has to flee under the throwing of Molotov cocktails. A huge fire softens the asphalt. The city center belongs to the demonstrators! Several marches move in different places in a yellow vest atmosphere. In the alleys of Bouffay, you no longer know who is demonstrating and who is coming out of the bars, because “everyone hates the police”. There is singing on the terraces. Luxury boutiques and flagships of multinationals are cleared. Until 1 a.m., the forces of order cannot move without being insulted from everywhere. At 11 p.m., a fire is still burning on the Cours des 50 Otages, and demonstrators are driven away by volleys of grenades. After midnight, the Rue de Strasbourg is still blocked, torn up and torn up again, and littered with projectiles for hundreds of meters. The word “revenge” is written in red letters on a wall.

As soon as the French state does not march several dozen militarized squadrons in our city, as soon as the union leaders do not organize the “dangerous route” requested by the prefecture, the anger of Nantes can finally unleash the full potential of its force. And the numbers don’t matter much, because this night of barricades will have made more noise than the eight previous, well-supervised processions with their tens of thousands of people. Rennes, Nantes, Paris, Marseille or Lyon, the fire is spreading.

After canceling a trip to the Gironde region, Gérald Darmanin (Minister of the Interior) convened all prefects of France this morning for a video conference on the “social situation”. Four more years with Macron are unthinkable for everyone. The calls for an “inter-union” day in a week seem ridiculous. After this night of rage, we should act without delay.

This report on the spontaneous revolt in Nantes on March 16 after the French government imposed its “pension reform” by decree (49.3) appeared on Contre Attaque on 17.32023.

Found on bonustracks.blackblogs

https://bonustracks.blackblogs.org/2023/03/17/nantes-die-nacht-der-barrikaden/

Source: Kontrapolis

DN Notes

1. CRS, Compagnies républicaines de sécurité. The CRS are a civilian corps (unlike the gendarmes, who are military), trained in anti-insurrection and antiriot techniques.

2. BAC, Brigade anti-criminalité. Plain clothes cops, identifiable in riot/protest situations by their orange arm bands. Used regulary in so called “sensitive areas” such as housing estates (banlieues) or economically poor or even migrant neighborhoods.

Greece: The day that anger swept the streets of Athens for the 57 dead of the train crash (March 8, 2023)

Posted on 2023/03/16 - 2023/03/16 by darknights

Greece: a country in mourning, still in shock, following the death of 57 people in a train crash at Tempe, the deadliest in the country and one of the worst in Europe.

8 days later the dead passengers, mainly young students, are still being buried and people continue to protest against the crime executed by the neoliberal government and a private company, that chose to sacrifice passenger safety for profit, resulting in a passenger service train, carrying more than 350 people, ramming into a freight train, just before midnight on Tuesday 28 February 2023, after they ended up on the same track mainly due to the lack of technical equipment and the incompetence of the stationmaster, causing the front carriages to burst into flames.

Ongoing revelations of staff shortages and substandard equipment have revealed the dangerous state of the privatized rail network. It was indeed an accident waiting to happen.

For 8 days, almost all protests in Athens have been brutally attacked by the so-called “mourning” riot police, under the orders of Mitsotakis government that pretends to care, while they even close down all metro stations around a protest’s starting point to deter people from joining them. Such is the government’s sincerity and repentance for the blood of 57 people on their hands. Regardless, the protest of March 8th was one of the biggest protests in Athens during the last decade, with more than 80,000 people taking part.

Just a few months before the parliamentary elections, the situation in Greece is unpredictable in a place where there is no justice, nor peace.

While the government still tries to evade assuming full responsibility for the train disaster, a general nationwide strike and new protests have been announced for Thursday, 16 March 2023.

Germany: Berlin greets Athena

Posted on 2023/01/12 by darknights

Get out where the homes are and the large families and the subproletariat and the proletarian women who are just waiting to punch the right people in the face. They’ll take the lead. And don’t get caught and learn from them how not to get caught – they know more about it than you do.
Unleash the class struggles. Organize the proletariat.
Gudrun Ensslin – Building the Red Army, June 1970

The clamor is great, the petty-bourgeois mob rages in the networks and media, fascists and Greens finally united in the cause. The Minister of Health has completely internalized the permanent state of emergency of the pandemic, anyone who obstructs operations by cops and firefighters should be obligingly thrown out of his apartment.

Everyone who wanted to know knew what was going to happen. Anyone walking the streets of this city, moving outside their comfort bubble, talking to the proletarian youth, knew that the night of reckoning had come. Almost three years of pandemic state of emergency, everywhere harassment, repression and cops, now the next solidarity effort of society, all have to make sacrifices for the just war. Where the coal is not enough at the end of the month anyway, it is not even enough for half the month. The everyday racism of the cops, the poverty that you only escape if you earn your money in a creative way beyond the bourgeois rules of the game. You are the dregs of society, educationally distant sounds more elegant than antisocial milieu, but it means the same thing.

For days the proles have been stocking up on pyrotechnics, the weapons of the little people, long queues in front of the stores, the smartest were beyond the borders, it must be really rumbling when the cops come. Already 2 days before New Year’s Eve the first confrontations with the cops in Berlin, partly the are lured with burning garbage cans and then attacked from a tactically clever position. The surplus proletariat of Berlin studies the actions of the French banlieue. Partly on Netflix. That’s how the times have become. Continue reading “Germany: Berlin greets Athena” →

Thessaloniki, Greece: Molotov attack on riot cops & riot during the 6th December, anniversary of the killing of Alexis Grigoropoulos

Posted on 2022/12/08 - 2022/12/08 by darknights

Extensive attacks on the riot cops in the center of Thessaloniki after the march for Alexandros Grigoropoulos who was killed by cops in 2008, turned into a riot on 6th Decemeber. Beginning 5th December, there have been extensive riots in Athens and Thessaloniki, protests in many towns around the country, after the shooting in the head of 16 year old Roma kid Kostas Fragoulis. At the same time, the Roma communities in the suburbs of Thessaloniki, Athens and other towns are rising up, fighting with the cops out side the hospital Kostas is being treated in, even outside the court where the cop murderer appeared. Barricades built of burning tyres and vehicles have been erected in their neighborhoods. In Ioannina a cop station was attacked during a protest, in Volos the ruling party New Democracy had its local HQ destroyed, in a Athens metro station a cop was cornered and had to be rescued by the scum of the OPKE special unit, that are also being used to attempt to put down the riots in the Roma areas. Spontaneous attacks are increasing, while the Roma are calling for an insurrection and further protests are planned outside the court and hospital.

Nothing is over, everything continues…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akz82E7e0S4

Below a cop murderer gets burned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXJZy-mOa8A

Greece: Scenes from the riot in Exarcheia after a 16-year-old kid was shot in the head by cops in Thessaloniki

Posted on 2022/12/06 - 2022/12/06 by darknights

Dec 5, 2022

It was during the early hours of Monday 5 December 2022, when a 16 year old kid was shot in the head by a greek police officer of the DIAS motorcycle unit during a car chase in Thessaloniki.

He was accused that he filled his pick-up truck with 20 euros worth of petrol and left the petrol station without paying. Following the news and his dire physical condition, riots erupted in the city of Thessaloniki, located in the north of Greece, later on the same day. At the same time, in Athens, several different protests were held in the evening of December the 5th. The protest in Exarcheia, held in front of the memorial of Alexis Grigoropoulos, (a 15 year old kid that was shot dead by a cop on 6 December 2008, sparking the events that would lead to massive riots all over Greece, known as the December Revolt) soon turned into a march that led to a riot, as seen in the video.

It has to be noted, that today 6 December, protests have been planned in dozens of cities and towns all over Greece, in remembrance of the December Revolt and the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the police in Exarcheia 15 years ago to this day.

Thessaloniki 5/12/22

Source: Act For Freedom Now!

Vitry-sur-Seine, France: Tires slashed for Spie and a private security firm in solidarity with rioters of Adolphe Chérieux High School

Posted on 2022/12/02 by darknights

In mid-November, a car belonging to the Spie company (among others a prison builder) and a car belonging to a security installation company had their tires flattened.

Action in solidarity with rioters from Adolphe Chérioux High School, in Vitry-sur-Seine [town near Paris; Ed], among whom some have ended up in jail and others will go to trial in February. Last week, the students blocked their high school, some clashed with the police and destroyed elements of street furniture (cameras, etc.). This mobilization was partly against the Parcoursup post-high school selection system.

What possible contacts between anarchists and minors in the struggle?

Down with the school, an institution of perpetration of the state, which has more to do with a prison than with “the freedom to learn.”

Solidarity also with anarchist prisoners.

Source: Attaque

Via: La Nemesi

Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: Update from the rally-march against the release of cop Korkoneas who killed Alexis Grigoropoulos on 6th December 2008

Posted on 2022/07/06 by darknights

On Tuesday 5 July a rally was called against the release of Korkoneas. The meeting was called at 20.00 at the intersection of Messolongiou and Tzavella. The response of the people was quite large, and it was decided to hold a march through the streets of Exarchia. The pulse was strong from start to finish, and slogans were constantly shouted, with the aim of demonstrating that “justice” is clearly class-based: On the one hand, it releases the cop-killer of Alexandros, by decision of the Lamia Court of Appeal, the same court of appeal that on the other hand deprives the anarchist hunger striker from 23/5, Giannis Michailidis, of his freedom. The march moved through the streets of Exarcheia, and ended exactly at the point where it started, namely at the monument of Alexandros.

After the end of the march, people chose to clash with the repressive forces that were positioned in the vicinity of Exarcheia, but also in many places in the neighbourhood. Another extreme form of authoritarianism and indiscriminate repression unfolded in Exarchia by the Greek Police assault battalions. Following the attacks by the riot police and DELTA forces, the repressive forces surrounded Exarcheia, drowned the neighbourhood in chemicals again and stormed the shops in the area, where patrons were having a drink. They began to bully and drag people into the pile. Specifically, in the bar “5 streets”, despite the strong protests and disapproval, all the people were brought to the GADA by MAT and OPKE, while not even the employees of the shop were spared from the “sweeping” operation. A spontaneous solidarity gathering was immediately called outside the GADA, where a large number of people in solidarity were present. The people who were arrested were released a few hours later. Continue reading “Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: Update from the rally-march against the release of cop Korkoneas who killed Alexis Grigoropoulos on 6th December 2008” →

Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: Video from the Day X protest & riots to resist the occupation of Exarcheia square by cops and the building of a metro station

Posted on 2022/06/26 - 2022/06/26 by darknights

Exarchia, Saturday night, around 20:30, 26 June 2022. People are starting to gather in Exarchia Square for the march against gentrification, evictions, political denaturalization and state repression in Exarchia. In front of the astonished eyes of the assembled people 5-6 motorbikes of the police group DRASI are defiantly passing by Exarchia Square. Apart from voices denouncing this provocative move by the police and warning of the response they will get the next time they provoke, there is no aggressive move against the police.

What are the police officers going and doing on their part? They leave and come back with more reinforcements to provoke incidents, about 15-20 motorcycles. The result of this is what is recorded in the video.

During their panicked retreat and after once again suffocating the area with asphyxiating gas, they even left behind radios, according to witnesses.

The march through Exarchia moved dynamically with the participation of hundreds. Continue reading “Exarcheia, Athens, Greece: Video from the Day X protest & riots to resist the occupation of Exarcheia square by cops and the building of a metro station” →

Wallmapu: Conviction against those who attacked police

Posted on 2022/02/02 by darknights

After the repression of a Mapuche march in August 2020 in the city of Temuco, skirmishes spread throughout the city. It was just at that moment that a lone policeman received a well-deserved beating, leaving him with a fractured jaw and collarbone, leaving a beautiful image that went viral.

Following surveillance cameras and eyewitnesses, OS-9 personnel managed to arrest three people who had participated in the attack.

At the end of January 2022 they faced trial accused of serious injuries, being considered guilty. The prosecution is requesting 7 years in prison for the two adults and 3 years and a day in semi-closed regime for the teenager.

Sometimes it is costly to defend the order of the rich?
Solidarity with those who attack the police!

Source: Publicacion Refractario

Rotterdam, Netherlands: Reflections and Report on the Nov. 19 Riots

Posted on 2021/11/25 by darknights

A comrade in the Netherlands has sent a first-hand report from last night’s extraordinary anti-police riots in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which included Dutch police firing their guns into the crowd.

Some out-of-touch “leftists” have tried to dismiss these riots because they coincided with and/or overtook a protest called by the right wing against new government restrictions. However, something like last night’s youth uprising against police cannot be so simply reduced— as our writer makes clear.

I don’t know where to start writing about this. On the one hand I’m overtaken by emotion, still processing the things I witnessed last night. On the other hand I’m trying to make sense of what has happened from the perspective of someone who believes in social revolution. I don’t think the latter will be something that I can fit into this short, emotionally laden piece of text, but some things need to be said about this right now. What happened last night was so much more than the supposed “fascist riot” many are dismissing it as.

Last night a protest against the (renewed) Coronavirus measures was called. This protest was clearly initiated by people that should, for the most part, be called fascist. These protests draw a crowd much more diverse than just fascists, however, and the discontent is broadening, especially now that the state is imposing more and stricter repression to control the spread of the virus.

In all this time I had not seen a single sign related to the protest, not heard a single slogan, not seen a single banner. This was about a collective and widespread hate for the police. You could taste, smell and feel it on every single corner of that street that night.

Continue reading “Rotterdam, Netherlands: Reflections and Report on the Nov. 19 Riots” →